Effort underway at Louisville's Blue Parrot to 'save the icon'

Paul Hinkle takes a sip of his beer at the Blue Parrot in Louisville on Wednesday. In a bid to save the icon, the 94-year-old restaurant is undergoing a makeover, with new flooring installed in the bar area this week and plans for a two-level outdoor door deck in place. (Jeremy Papasso / Daily Camera)

LOUISVILLE -- New paint is going up on the walls as old wallpaper is coming down. The bar is surrounded by new flooring -- installed this week -- and plans for a two-level outdoor deck behind the restaurant are moving forward.

Call it the "renewal" of the Blue Parrot, a 94-year-old staple of the downtown Louisville dining scene that has fallen on hard times of late.

At least that's what general manager Paul Weissmann is calling the effort to keep the venerable Italian joint viable in a city where nothing less than a restaurant renaissance has taken place.

"I look at it as an effort to save the icon," Weissmann said late Wednesday morning as a few early lunch customers trickled into the restaurant at the corner of Pine and Main streets. "The last decade was a real down decade."

With exception of a year or two, the Blue Parrot has been operating in the red for the past 10 years or more -- a reference to its sour ledger sheet, not its hardy spaghetti sauce.

"They were very close to putting it on the market or closing it down a couple of years ago," said Weissmann, speaking of the Colacci family, five generations of which have run the Blue Parrot since it opened in 1919 to serve Louisville's predominantly Italian-American coal mining population.

More than just spaghetti

That would have been unthinkable just a generation or two ago, when families from all over would come to Louisville for Italian food.

"It used to be that people would come here to eat at Colacci's (a second restaurant the family opened on Main Street in the 1950s) or Blue Parrot and go to the one that didn't have the line," said Weissmann, a former Democratic state lawmaker who has worked behind the bar at the Blue Parrot for 25 years. "We realize the city is different than what it used to be -- people don't just come to Louisville to have spaghetti any more."

He said the restaurant's misfortune is only partly explained by the increased competition from the wave of new restaurants that have opened in the last five years along Main Street and the immensely popular outdoor patios that draw crowds to those eateries during the summer.

There were other problems as well.

Business in the Blue Parrot's 140-person banquet room, which opened in late 2001, was severely impacted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent slowdown in the economy. Then the family was rattled by the deaths of Tony and Joe Colacci in 2006 and 2007, respectively, both sons of Blue Parrot founders Mike and Mary Colacci and long-time operators of the restaurant.

"That creates a difficult dynamic in the family," said Weissmann, who plans to slowly take over ownership of the restaurant from Joan Colacci Riggins.

Add to that changing demographics, the proliferation of restaurant choices in and around Louisville and the restaurant's own failure to respond to changing tastes and desires, and the relevance of the Blue Parrot came into question.

"We haven't done a great job of reaching out to the younger folks," Weissmann said.

Of late, the restaurant has made strides in that direction, adding more salads and gluten-free items to its menu, making its children's menu more kid-friendly, expanding its wine selection and making sure craft beers are ready to pour at the tap.

And doing all of that, Weissmann said, without abandoning what made the Blue Parrot great for nearly a century -- its hardy marinara sauce, its fresh meat from Larimer County, its fresh eggs from Erie, and its thick, one-of-a-kind noodles.

Mary Beth Bonacci's family was one of those that would make what she called the "pilgrimage" to Louisville from their home in Lakewood to dine Italian. She still eats at the Blue Parrot today.

"My grandfather lived in Walsenberg -- when he came to Denver, he knew where he wanted to go," she said.

Bonacci applauds the restaurant for paying attention to what today's diner wants and looks forward to sitting out under the stars with a Blue Parrot meal in front of her -- the restaurant's $25,000 outdoor deck could be ready to go by late summer.

"You don't want them to become like the new restaurants," she said. "You want them to be the best of what they are, which is an old-school Italian spaghetti joint."

'Nothing happens overnight'

Judy Goodson, president of the Louisville Downtown Business Association, said the Blue Parrot should do all it can to capitalize on its longevity and historic status.

"The one thing the Blue Parrot has that no one else has is that they are the longest standing restaurant in downtown Louisville," she said. "I think one of the true treasures of downtown Louisville is the blending of the historical with the modern -- it's a selling point."

And that history can be preserved while making the aesthetic and menu changes that will draw in a new generation of diners, she said.

"The secret of success in any business is to keep up with the customers' changing needs," Goodson said.

Scarpella, 63, said he has been eating at the Blue Parrot for decades and even bussed tables at the restaurant in the 1960s. He's happy to see a facelift happening inside the restaurant along with the addition of outdoor seating behind the building.

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